Mail Archives: cygwin/2009/01/11/16:05:15
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| Date: | Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:04:30 -0500
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| From: | "Lee D.Rothstein" <lee AT veritech DOT com>
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| Subject: | First Pass at mintty documentation
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Hi, I've taken a first pass at distilling my experience with
'mintty' and the [ahem] discussion, here, about it into a text
file (see attachment mintty.{h})
If there is an affinity to it, I would be happy to plug this all
into a valid man template.
For my votes on 'mintty':
* I love it the way it is.
* Favorite features:
> Speed
> Speed
> Best conformance to my personal expectation of what various
directional keys (<HOME>, <END>, <->>, <<->, etc.) should do!
(However, still bummed that <CTRL>-<->> & <CTRL>-<<-> do not
move, respectively forward and back a word on the command
line!)
* Futures expectation: My number one goal would be for it to
replace the Cygwin console for everything, although I
understand there are great difficulties with that goal.
Because of the nature of various "discussion" elements in wading
through this stuff, I am referring to my documentation "project" as:
*Diuretics*!
***********
Thank you, very much, Mr. Andy Koppe.
Signed,
L. Dave Rothstein (Lee) ;-)
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Content-Type: text/plain;
name="mintty.{h}"
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filename="mintty.{h}"
MinTTY
******
* Purpose
> MinTTY is a terminal emulator (virtual terminal) for Cygwin
that is better- integrated than any other available terminal
emulator into Windows.
* Features:
> Xterm-compatible terminal emulation, including support for
modifier keys and application mouse mode.
> Native Windows user interface that tries to keep things
simple.
= Window frame
= Scrollbar
= Right-click menu (also reachable via menu key)
= Options dialog, with font and color selectors
= Copy & paste behaviour (copy-on-demand, <CTRL>-<INS>
copies, <CTRL>-V copies, shift-left click extends)
= Drag & drop
= Options dialog
> X windows compatibilities, also
= Options dialog allows configure in an Xish way
= MinTTY can be configured via .minttyrc
> Drag & drop and copy & paste of text and files. (The latter
are inserted as quoted filenames.)
> Mousewheel events can be sent as arrow keys. (This allows
mousewheel scrolling, e.g., in 'less'.)
> Options are stored in a text file ('~/.minttyrc'). Ergo no
registry entries are required.
> Window transparency.
> Small executable size (currently <120K).
> Not a replacement for the Windows Command Prompt. While
Windows console programs with simple text output should work
fine, more complex output will likely not display correctly.
> Unlike PuTTYcyg, MinTTY discards PuTTY's networking
functions, which are already convered by Cygwin's OpenSSH and
telnet packages. This results in simpler configuration, a
leaner interface and small code size. MinTTY's most obvious
difference to rxvt is its native Windows interface and
configuration dialog.
* Files, Binaries, Help Sources
> Updates and source code are available at:
http://code.google.com/p/mintty.
> MinTTY discussion group at:
http://groups.google.com/group/mintty-discuss
* Credits/License
MinTTY is copyright 2008-09 Andy Koppe.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty
merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is
licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License
version 3 or later.
MinTTY is based on PuTTY version 0.60 by Simon Tatham and
contributors, available from
ftp://ftp.chiark.greenend.org.uk/users/sgtatham/putty-0.60. Big
thanks to everyone involved. Thanks also to KDE's Oxygen team
for the program icon.
* Environment
> Should work on Windows 2000 and upwards, although so far it
has been tested on XP and Vista (32b & 64b) only.
* Installation/Program Configuration
> MinTTY requires Cygwin, so Windows needs to be able to find
the Cygwin DLL (cygwin1.dll) when starting mintty.exe. There
are several ways to ensure this:
= Start it from within an existing Cygwin session.
= Place mintty.exe alongside cygwin1.dll in the Cygwin /bin
directory and start it from there.
= Add the Cygwin bin directory (normally C:\cygwin\bin) to
the Windows PATH variable, which can be found under
'Environment Variables' on the 'Advanced' tab of the System
Properties. This is a good idea anyway, as it makes all the
Cygwin commands available from the Windows 'Command Prompt'
and 'Run...' dialog.
= Create a shortcut to mintty.exe with the working directory
set to the Cygwin bin directory. The create_shortcut.js
script will do this for you.
> Windows Shortcuts
= Can have arguments too, which have to be listed after the
program location in the 'Target:' box of their properties.
This can be very useful with MinTTY, for instance for
creating icons for 'ssh' sessions or your favourite editor.
= To invoke 'bash' within mintty as a login/interactive shell
(e.g., as a Win shortcut):
mintty bash -li
* CLI Options/Arguments
> --version -- print version
> --help -- print usage information.
> --config -- By default, MinTTY will store its configuration
into a file called .minttyrc in your Cygwin home ('~')
directory. This can be overridden with the --config command
line option.
> Any other command line arguments are interpreted as the
command to execute in the terminal session. If no command is
given, MinTTY will look up the current users default shell in
/etc/passwd. If that is not set, it will run /bin/sh.
> 'mintty' runs synchronous to the shell it's invoked from.
Therefore if running from a batch file (like 'cygwin.bat'):
start mintty bash --login -i
will allow the batch file that invokes 'mintty' to terminate
while the invoking terminal session continues.
* Interactive configuration
> Full screen mode/Sized screen mode available from Title Bar
Right Icons
> Options Menu Hierarchy:
= Options menu is accessible through Title Bar, left icon,
left click.
= Or, is accessible from the keyboard: <ALT><SPACE>o
<MENU>o
> Options Hierarchy
Window
# Columns
# Rows
... Size information is automatically input to these
fields when a window is resized using the mouse cursor
and the lower left corner of the terminal window. Also, a
pop-up box above the left corner of the title bar list
what the new sizing is ...
Transparency
Off
Low
Medium
High
Disable transparency when active
Show scrollbar
Close on <Alt><F4>
Looks
Colors
Foreground
Background
Cursor
Show bold text as bright
Allow text blinking
Cursor
Block
Line
Underline
Enable Cursor blinking
Font
Select [font name and size]
... Default font point size is 10; be sure to pick
fixed pitch font ...
Smoothing
System Default
Antialiased
Non-Antialiased
Clear Type
Codepage
... all Windows/int'l choices ...
Keys
Key Codes
Backspace
^H
^?
Escape
^[
^\
Control key on its own sends ^[
Modifier key for scrolling
Shift
Ctrl
Alt
Mouse
Right click action
Show Menu
Extend
[Use the right click for extending the text
selection, X style. <Shift><left-click>, Win
standard, always extends.]
Paste
Copy on select
Application mouse mode
[The mouse pointer changed according to application
mouse mode and override key.]
Default click target
Application
Window
Modifier key for overriding default
Shift
Ctrl
Alt
Output
Printer
None
... Windows available printers ...
Bell
Action
None
System sound
Flash window
Taskbar indication
Disabled
Steady
Blinking
> Alternatively, the config file, '~/.minttyrc' can be edited directly.
= Here's an example '.minttyrc' file:
Columns=140
Rows=42
Transparency=3
OpaqueWhenFocused=1
Scrollbar=1
CloseOnAltF4=1
BoldAsBright=1
AllowBlinking=1
CursorType=2
CursorBlinks=1
FontIsBold=0
FontHeight=14
FontCharset=0
FontQuality=0
BackspaceSendsDEL=0
EscapeSendsFS=0
AltSendsESC=0
ScrollMod=1
RightClickAction=0
CopyOnSelect=1
ClickTargetsApp=1
ClickTargetMod=1
BellType=1
BellIndication=2
Font=Consolas
Codepage=ISO-8859-1:1998 (Latin-1, West Europe)
Printer=
ForegroundColour=0,255,255
BackgroundColour=0,0,32
CursorColour=255,0,0
* Invoking 'mintty'
> MinTTY's current behaviour is the same as rxvt's and xterm's,
and therefore it makes sense not to execute the profile when
starting a new terminal from within an existing session using
just 'rxvt &' or 'mintty &'.
> To invoke 'bash' within mintty as a login/interactive shell
(e.g., as a Win shortcut):
mintty bash -li
> 'mintty' runs synchronous to the shell it's invoked from.
Therefore if running from a batch file (like 'cygwin.bat'):
start mintty bash --login -i
will allow the batch file that invokes 'mintty' to terminate
while the invoking terminal session continues.
* Rodentology
> Mousewheel events can be sent as arrow keys. (This allows
mousewheel scrolling e.g. in less.)
When on the alternate screen and not in application mouse mode,
mousewheel-up/down sends arrow-up/down combined with the scroll
modifier configured under Keys, so with the default Shift you
get ^[[1;2A and ^[[1;2B. (Replace the 2 with 3 for Alt or 5 for
Ctrl).
@@ What "alternate screen"? @@
The thinking behind that is that this replaces the terminal
scrollback when on the alternate screen, and that plain
arrows mean cursor movement rather than scrolling. And a word
of warning: the feature doesn't work in Vista when the
scrollbar is shown. Looks like the inactive scrollbar is
swallowing the mousewheel events.
> Activate mousewheel scrolling in 'less' with the following two
lines in your .lesskey file. Don't forget to run 'lesskey' to
compile it into less's internal format.
\eO1;2A back-line
\eO1;2B forw-line
BTW, it's 'O' rather than '[' here, because 'less' switches
into "application cursor key" mode. (Yep, the world of
terminals is full of fascinating yet strangely pointless
details like that.)
* Terminal definition for 'mintty' -- termcap/terminfo
> There is none!
> Options to be used in profile (?):
TERM=cygwin
TERM=xterm
> This will tell you what you've got/possible:
$ set | grep TERM
> Comments
The proper GNUIsh thing to do would be to set TERM to
"mintty", but that would require 'termcap' and 'terminfo'
entries. I guess that might be worth considering for a MinTTY
package, although iirc KDE's Konsole and GNOME's terminal
also just set it to "xterm", because like MinTTY they aim to
be compatible with (the default config of) xterm. Would make
life easier for everyone to settle on that as a standard.
* Interactive Use
> Scrollback buffer.
= Not currently an option.
= Arbitrarily fixed it at 16 KB.
> Copy & Paste
= Middle-click paste is always available
= Copy-on-select
= Right-click extend select can be enabled on the Mouse page of
the options.
= File drag and drop pastes in a Win32 path.
= Pasting of multiple lines into apps like 'vim' works properly.
> Options
= Available via
+ <SHIFT>-<RIGHT>-<CLICK> on screen of virtual terminal window
+ <RIGHT>-<CLICK> on Windows context menu key
+ Right-click on Title Bar
> Keys
= <F1> to <F4> send xterm-compatible VT220-style keycodes
= <ALT>-<F4> closes mintty window, but can be disabled from
Options menu
= Characters can be entered via Windows
<Alt>-<NUMPAD_decimal_number> codes
+ Extending on the standard Windows behavior, codepoints
beyond 255 are supported and octal codes can be entered
by typing zero as the first digit.
* Bugs / Confusions
> Alternate Screen
= Is there an alternate screen toggle in 'mintty' as there is
in 'xterm'?
= How do you invoke it?
> <CTRL>-<LEFT-ARROW>/CTRL>-<RIGHT_ARROW> does not appear to
work to move back forward one word on command line. How do
you fix this?
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